Run existing FreeBSD installation inside jail

[albi]

On Fri, 21 Jul 2006 15:40:03 +0200
"Hr. Daniel Mikkelsen" <daniel at copyleft.no> wrote:

> Mikhail Vladimirov wrote:
> 
> > I want to try the following trick:
> > 
> > 1. Install FreeBSD 6.x-STABLE on the separate HDD, while it is
> > inside my home PC.
> > 2. Place this HDD into server, make it bootable.
> > 3. Boot new system, and mount old HDD (with FreeBSD 4.x and all old
> > stuff)
> > 4. Setup jail inside new system, which will run old system.
> > 5. Now I have all services running, and I can transfer it to new
> > system one by one quietly.
> > 
> > I believe, that FreeBSD is backward compatible, and all my stuff,
> > which successfully run on 4.x sill run inside jail on 6.x.  I am
> > right?  Did anybody tried to do something like this?  What was the
> > results?
> 
> Hi.
> 
> It might work well enough for your services to run, depending on what
> they are.
> 
> I'd insert two new steps in between 3 and 4:
> 
> 3b: Tar down a copy of the old system.
> 3c: Upgrade the old system in place (mergemaster, installworld, etc.)
> to the same version your new system is running.

the original poster didn't say whether the services were from ports
and/or base

if from ports only then your suggestion (3c) could perhaps lead to
problems (that is upgrading base and not upgrading ports, or am i wrong
here ?)

FYI, from experience i know that e.g. the config-file of dovecot changed
(different syntax), so you can't just switch from 4.x to 6.x and keep
all your config-files from the old setup for software from the ports

in that case you need to first get a working setup for your services for
6.x before switching completely, but other than that the original plan
sounds good